HYDERABAD: How is the post-COVID-19 world going to look? Will it make us pay more attention to nature? Will it make us more appreciative of the teeny joys that we used to take for granted? While we can go on speculating, we are sure that a few words, which have become a part of our lives now, will remind us of this crisis long after it is over.
SOCIAL DISTANCING: Practised only by introverts earlier, it has become everyone’s safety mantra now. The more the distance, the safer you are. Even after we overcome this, getting used to crowded places is going to take some time.
ISOLATION: This word mostly had a melancholic ring to it till now, but thanks to coronavirus, it can save lives. In a community- oriented country like India, staying isolated too can have benefits now.
IMMUNITY: Garlic, turmeric, ginger, Vitamin-C – everyone is running after kitchen hacks to build immunity. Hitherto ‘unpalatable’ items like bitter gourd are making frequent appearances on the dining table, and kids suspect it’s just a scam to make them eat veggies.
MASK: The last time when the word was this famous was when Jim Carrey’s ‘Mask’ released. After the pandemic, this accessory might become a part of everyday fashion.
PPE: This is what the doctors and nurses don’t have. While we spend crores in building statues, we will remember that healthcare workers did not have the basic Personal Protective Equipment.
ESSENTIAL SERVICES: After the lockdown, many of us had to eat a humble pie and realise that our services are not exactly ‘essential’. This new-found realisation about our role in society is going to influence how we evaluate ourselves.
QUARANTINE: Many of us might not get the pronunciation quite right, but we know what it is (or hope so).
VIRUS: Yes, the source of it all. It’s not a meteor that struck us, or rising sea water that drowned us (not yet). It’s just this microscopic creature. No one is going to take a virus flippantly ever after this.
HAND-SANITISERS: Those bottles which you bought for journeys, or for dining in restaur a n t s w i t h hygienically-compromised washing areas, are worth their weight in gold now. Everyone is going to stock them up.
ESSENTIALS: It takes a pandemic to show us what we really need. After the world returns to ‘normal’ and we get to buy all the things we thought we missed, we might find that we don’t need them at all.
PANDEMIC: Of all the tales we tell the next generation, ‘we lived through a pandemic’ is going to be the often-repeated one. This word is part of our lexicon for eternity now.
—kakoli@newindianexpress.com
@kakolimukherje2